The position in August 2026

We cannot tell you whether The Funded Trader is still trading, and that is itself the finding. What we can tell you is this: its website has been unreachable, the trade press stopped covering it in March 2025, a major directory has delisted it, its founder publicly retired from prop firms last week, and traders were still posting this month that they cannot get paid.

We would not buy a challenge from this firm, and we do not carry an affiliate link to it. If you are already owed money by The Funded Trader, the history below is the fullest picture we can put together from sourced reporting.

The website returns an error on every page

Checked 31 August 2026: both thefundedtrader.com and thefundedtraderprogram.com return HTTP 402, Payment Required, on every path we tried, including robots.txt. A blanket 402 across an entire domain is characteristic of a hosting or CDN account suspended for non-payment, although some bot-management products also return that code, so we are not treating it as proof of closure on its own. The domain itself is still registered, through GoDaddy, expiring 16 November 2026, last changed in November 2025.

What went wrong, with dates

In late March 2024 the firm abruptly paused all operations, following payout allegations that management had previously dismissed as propaganda. On 26 April 2024 it announced a restructuring and a relocation to the Cayman Islands from its US base, without clarifying whether ownership remained with Easton Consulting Technologies or whether the business had been sold. Every existing account was required to restart from the challenge phase; there were no migrations. Chief executive Angelo Ciaramello removed references to the firm from his social media around the same time. It resurfaced roughly five months later, in August 2024.

The backlog grew instead of shrinking

This is the number that matters. As of 3 March 2025, 1,272 traders had been waiting since March 2024 for money they were owed. That figure had risen from around 900 the previous November. A year into the recovery, the queue was getting longer.

The firm reported paying out just over $386,000 during March 2025, its best month since resuming, and routed payments through Rise on blockchain rails, which at least makes individual transactions checkable. But the chief executive also described reaching settlements with traders who had, in his words, accepted 10%, 20% or 30% of their original owed amounts, totalling $250,000. Read that back slowly: traders were being asked to write off between 70% and 90% of money they had already earned.

What has happened since

Trade-press coverage stops on 27 March 2025. For a firm that was once among the largest in the sector, eighteen months of silence in the specialist press is a signal in itself.

On 24 August 2026 it was reported that Ciaramello had shut Rev One Trading, his futures prop firm, and moved into prediction markets, posting that it had been a run from The Funded Trader through multiple other firms but it was time to retire from prop firms. To be precise: that report concerns Rev One, not The Funded Trader. Neither article says what became of The Funded Trader itself. But it is the same person, and he has publicly left the industry.

Prop Firm Match has delisted the firm and attaches four warnings to its entry, recommending extra caution before funding an account. That directory is itself affiliate-monetised and competes for the same traffic, so we treat it as corroborating rather than decisive.

Traders are still posting. Reviews dated 21 July, 13 August and 15 August 2026 describe delayed or denied payouts and unresponsive support. One from July reads: “They give no payout! Scam!! I have waited for about two month now.” These are individual allegations we cannot verify, but the pattern and the dates are consistent with the documented backlog.

A word on the reviews you will find elsewhere

At least one large aggregator was, as recently as February 2026, presenting The Funded Trader as operating normally, with a $189 entry fee and an 80% to 90% profit split, and made no mention of the operations pause, the relocation or the backlog. We do not think that is accurate, and we mention it only so you know why the picture online is confusing. Prop firm listings on affiliate sites go stale, and nobody has a commercial reason to update a page for a firm that has stopped converting.

The Trustpilot profile is worth understanding

The score sits at 2.9 out of 5 from nearly 22,000 reviews, distributed as 65% five-star and 24% one-star with very little in between. That barbell shape is not what review manipulation usually looks like. It looks like a real company with a large base of genuinely happy customers from its growth years, followed by a heavy tail of people who were there when it stopped paying. The firm is not replying to the negative reviews.

If you are owed money

We are not lawyers and this is not legal advice. What we would say is that the settlements described above were reportedly negotiated directly, that payments were made on public blockchain rails which leaves a checkable record, and that the firm relocated to the Cayman Islands in 2024, which affects where any claim would need to be brought. Anyone with a substantial sum outstanding should take proper advice rather than rely on a review page.

Alternatives we have actually checked

Our prop firm reviews cover firms verified as currently operating, with their payout evidence set out honestly. Best Prop Firms compares them. And our free lessons cover the drawdown and risk rules that decide whether a challenge is passable in the first place.